Notes
Lo and behold, Clerks II defies the odds as a sequel that even the most ardent Clerks fans can be happy about. Twelve years after Kevin Smith turned the independent film world upside-down with his $27,000 black-and-white comedy, perpetual slackers Dante (Brian O'Halloran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson) return for another raucous romp in suburbia, but this time there's no beloved Quick Stop mini-mart to ensure their low-level employment. Now they're aimless 33-year-olds flippin' burgers at Mooby's, a fast-food joint with a cow theme that's "udderly delicious." Dante's engaged to his long-time girlfriend but has unexpectedly fallen in love with Mooby's manager Becky (and since she's played by Rosario Dawson, can you blame him?), and Randal's still holding out for life, liberty, and the pursuit of low ambition. The responsibilities of adulthood are rearing their ugly head, and with Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith) still dealing weed and generally being obnoxious, well... something's gotta give, right? The way Smith has written this long-awaited follow-up, the dilemmas of Dante, Randal, and their ongoing friendship are something that anyone can relate to, and with Dawson lighting up the screen (in a role demanded by producer Harvey Weinstein to boost box-office appeal), the movie's romantic chemistry is surprisingly delightful. Rest assured, also, that Smith (shooting mostly in color this time, on a $5 million budget) hasn't forgotten where he came from: Clerks II is jam-packed with the same lewd, crude humor that made Clerks an indie-film phenomenon, and Smith's good-natured sincerity is still on full display, ensuring that only the most prudish viewers could possibly be offended. For everyone else, this is as enjoyable as any sequel could ever hope to be, with amusing cameos by Smith-movie veterans Ben Affleck and Jason Lee, among others. --Jeff Shannon
Entertainment
The entertainment industry has grown and evolved over the years with music and cinema taking a new form through the ages and so have the technologies that fuel it. Gone are the days of eight songs on a cassette and VCR players with merely two hours of entertainment recorded on a single video cassette. With the advent of computers came digital data storage and hence the birth of DVD/CDs.
Quiet a step back in matters of physical form as these new generation audio/video storage devices hold an uncanny resemblance to the records that preceded the cassette generation. DVDs and CDs today are an everyday household entertainment storage device which has come a long way since the first records and cassettes were distributed commercially.
Notable advantages of DVD/CDs have to begin with the amount of storage space available. These days its possible to burn multiple movies on a single DVD and as far as audio goes if its in a highly compressed format such as .mp3 a single CD can accommodate multiple music albums. These discs are easy to handle, light and portable with no moving devices unlike the tape generation however they are delicate and a scratch on the DVD/CD surface could cause a disruption in the information being read by the player.
DVD/CDs were initially invented to provide high quality audio/video data to a user with the ability to regulate its production however this soon fizzled away with daily household computers gaining the ability to burn data in such formats. The race to curb piracy through such means has not hit a roadblock and DVD/CDs keep evolving with newer encryption technologies in a bid to curb unchecked replication of data spawning newer technologies like Blu-ray discs which seems to be yet another milestone on an unending road of innovation.
